Chapter Text
“So, okay, you said there were fourteen,” Sasha says between bites of curry. Jon, who is sitting primly with a glass of water and nothing else in front of him, nods.
“Correct. I am of course happy to go through them one by one or just give you a list and let you ask questions,” he says, “the good news is that unlike most people being exposed to this world for the first time, the three of you do essentially have free access to eldritch Wikipedia. The bad news is I’m not great at figuring out how much information is too much, so I ask you all to please tell me if I start waxing lyrical about something grotesque.”
Tim shoves his hair out of his face with a laugh. “What, do you just get so caught up in the poetry of it all that you forget you’re talking about, you know, writhing nightmare flesh or whatever?”
“Unfortunately,” Jon says, a sardonic smile on his face, “yes. I’m about as desensitized to this stuff as it’s possible to be; by my nature I simply find it fascinating. I am… passable, at faking decorum, but I know I can go off on unpleasant tangents.”
Martin is quiet. Sasha and Tim had conspired to have him sitting next to Jon, and he’s at once terribly distracted and focusing as much as he can; when Tim raises an eyebrow at him he just makes a face.
“Okay, so just run us down the line like it’s an unpleasant get to know you exercise and you’re everyone,” Sasha says. “Name, job, one fun fact, that sort of thing.”
Jon snorts. “Yes, alright, that’s doable. I suppose I should start with the one you work for, the Beholding; the Eye is the fear of being watched, being known, your darkest secrets being seen by something other and malevolent. It’s also the fear of learning what you shouldn’t, of forbidden knowledge and awful truths. That’s the part I’m a fragment of, although technically I guess I am sort of the receptacle for all those dark secrets?
“Next, I guess I’ll go with the Lonely; it’s pretty simple, and tends to be loosely allied with the eye. Its purview is isolation, emptiness, looking out into the world and realizing that no one is looking back. As far as the entities go, it’s one of the most insidious. Not the most, but up there.”
Jon’s eyes flick to Martin for a fraction of a second and then he feels Jon’s knee bump his under the table, a tiny sort of I’m here gesture.
“Another one we’ve encountered is the Corruption; represents filth, rot, bugs and decay and illness. Within the Corruption are different, uh, different kinds of Avatars—Jane Prentiss, for instance, is a part of the Hive, which is a kind of love, in its own deeply upsetting way, whereas John Amherst—oh, I don’t think you three have been exposed to his work yet. Well. He’s more on the disease side. Infection rather than infestation.
“An important distinction, here, between most insect statements and arachnid statements; the Web is an entity of its own, and is. Well, it’s definitely the most insidious; the Web, or the Spider, or the Mother of Puppets, it has a lot of names, is both the fear specifically of spiders — I’m not saying it’s fair, Martin, but it is what it is — and the fear of being controlled, manipulated, woven into a plan you cannot see nor change. The Web and I have issues.”
“I’m sorry, issues? Are you saying you’ve got, what, beef with the dread god of spider hell?” Tim asks, raising an eyebrow.
“No, beef would be the Flesh. Genuinely, I don’t know how aware the entity itself is of me, but certainly I’m not on great terms with any of its servants,” Jon says, shrugging. “Actual, natural spiders are generally fine, although I prefer to keep them out of the archive since I’m never sure which ones my… acquaintance… Annabelle can see through. But there’s, um, there’s unpleasant history there, yes.”
“Incredible.”
“Seems kind of dumb that spiders would get an entire fear entity,” Martin mutters. Beside him, Jon laughs.
“Yeah, it’s a little arbitrary, unfortunately. I’ve always found it strange snakes aren’t more heavily featured, given their prevalence in folklore and religion? But I suppose webs have a more striking symbolic use.
“Anyway. There’s also the Spiral, which we’ve talked about before; Michael is a part of it. It’s the fear of lies, of madness, of unreality, of being unable to trust your own mind or surroundings. Fractals, also, are a part of it, branching paths and impossibilities and such. It’s a very, er, colorful one. Difficult to categorize, sometimes.”
Sasha raises a hand to cut him off before he can go to the next one. “I have a question about Michael, actually. You said he was your friend, but also that he’s dangerous; what should we do if we wind up talking to him without you around?”
“Ah,” Jon says, pulling a face. “Well. I don’t… think… he’d eat you-“
“ Eat us?!”
“Er, yes. Like I said, I don’t think he would, but it’s probably best not to go through any of his doors unless you absolutely have to? At least not without me. The Distortion’s corridors are confusing on the best of days.”
“What is he?” Tim asks, frowning. Jon hums.
“He’s… a monster. Technically. And he’s also a warped alternate dimension made of infinite hallways. And he’s also a man named Michael, sort of. It’s a difficult thing to define, since by his nature he is undefinable.”
“But, okay, wait, is he a person or not?”
“Hm. Unfortunately, Tim, there’s really no good answer to that question; any answer I give you would be some kind of lie, which I prefer to avoid. Suffice it to say he is my friend, and I am pretty sure he won’t kill or maim any of you.”
“That’s extremely comforting, thank you, boss,” Tim says, groaning and scrubbing at his face with one hand. “He’s a monster that’s also a hallway that’s also a person but isn’t a person and he probably won’t kill and eat us. Fantastic.”
“Technically—nevermind,” Jon says, shaking his head with a wry smile. “Nevermind, that doesn’t matter and only makes it more confusing.
“Anyway, Dread Powers. Next, I guess, is the Vast? Vast is pretty self-explanatory; heights, depths, wide open spaces, an empty sky. Something so huge that to it we are less than nothing. The Fairchild…. family? Cult? Loosely-connected polycule? Anyway, the Fairchilds are another source of funding for the institute, so we have to play nice with them.
“On the other side of the same coin is the Buried; crushing, dirt, digging deeper and deeper in search of a place that’s finally secure; choking and claustrophobia and suffocation, that kind of thing. They like to act like they’re the opposite of the Vast, but they actually have a lot in common.”
Martin laughs softly and says, “are they also in love? You’re making it sound very Romeo and Juliet.”
That gets a laugh and a warm grin out of Jon, which means it’s a complete success. “I don’t know if they’re capable of love, but it’s a compelling image for sure.”
“Star-crossed lovers! I mean, the sky and the earth? Absolute classic, you can’t tell me otherwise,” he laughs. Jon bumps his knee again companionably.
“Incredible. Okay, next, there’s the dark, which I’m sure you can extrapolate the nature of. The Dark’s and the Eye’s servants loathe each other, since obviously we’re all about knowing and seeing and the Dark is… not that. The dark is probably one of the most primal of the fears; it’s many people’s first fear, certainly, and one that lingers.
“Another primal one is the Hunt; proof positive that the fears do not only reflect humans. It is, quite simply, the fear of being prey. Teeth and claws and blood, running desperate through brush and forest… Its avatars tend to be… quite vicious.
“Around the same time as Smirke was working out the main fourteen was when the Flesh became one, separate from the Hunt—the flesh is most of the, erm, the body horror stuff we see; it’s bones and flesh and sickening meat, the fears brought about by a world transitioning to an industrialized livestock system. It’s a fairly gross domain.”
“So- so is that, uh, Boneturner guy flesh?” Sasha looks at her curry and takes a bite of vegetables, avoiding the meat.
“Yeah,” Jon says, then he laughs softly and shakes his head. “Although he is unique in that he truly does not care about bringing the world to its knees in his patron’s image. The guy just wants to bend bones, apparently.”
“Sorry, bringing the what to what,” Tim asks. Jon sighs.
“I’m getting there. There’s also the Slaughter, which is the rhythmic, cold violence often found in war, and the Desolation—also known as the Lightless Flame— which is burning, mindless destruction, all the heat and devastation of fire with none of the light or life. I mean, okay, the fire does often still burn, but symbolically, they have a whole thing happening.
“Tim, you and I talked last night about the Stranger; the Stranger is also not fond of the Eye, because the Eye is It-Knows-You and the Stranger is I-Do- Not- Know-You. The stranger is someone you do not know but that means you harm, it’s the uncanny valley, a person that is just slightly wrong. It also deals in. Well. In skin. Faces, flaying, stolen identities, that kind of thing.”
“Clowns and circuses,” Tim mumbles, and Jon nods.
“Yes. Given traveling circuses are very much paint-faced strangers appearing and vanishing again, they make an excellent vessel for the Stranger’s happenings. The specific Circus of the Other that you encountered is a bit over a hundred years old and, er, it’s a lot. I will mention that, much like spiders, most circuses have no plans to skin anyone or end the world. Just to be clear.”
“Noted and ignored,” Tim says, and Jon laughs.
“Finally, of course, is the End. Inevitability. Death. Pretty simple, but it was the first and it will be the last. All things must end and what goes up must come down and no matter what you do, no matter who you hurt, there is nothing that can stop it forever. Something many avatars try to forget.”
His eyes are faraway, his voice distant; this is something he thinks about often, and something that doesn’t actually seem to scare him. After a second he shakes it off and smiles. “—But the heat-death of the universe won’t be for a while. Inertia will catch up eventually, but like Simon is so fond of telling me, we might as well have a good time while we’re here.”
That evening, while Martin is getting ready to sleep, Jon slips quietly into the old document room where the folding bed is.
“Martin,” he says, his voice soft. Martin stops fruitlessly fluffing his pillow to look at him.
“Yeah?”
“I, um. I just wanted to thank you,” he says. He tugs at his hair absently, not meeting Martin’s gaze.
“Oh, that’s— what for?” Martin asks, blinking. Jon smiles, tiny and fragile.
“This morning, when you gave me your statement— ah. That you did that, it probably saved Miss Herne from an even worse fate than the one the Lukases have already forced on her. I… I really do appreciate it. So. Thank you.”
Martin stares at Jon, speechless for a moment, then he nods, smiling back at him. “I mean— yeah, of course, Jon. I told you earlier, I’m glad I could. And, um, I’m also glad you didn’t take her statement anyway, I guess? I assume you could have.”
“Yes,” Jon murmurs. “It would have been easier than what I did. But avoiding hurting her, it’s something I wouldn’t have been able to do without you —a-and I’m not saying we should make a habit of you getting worm haunted or anything!— I just. You’ve been a wonderful help, Martin, in general as well as in this specific circumstance. I wanted to make sure you knew that.”
There is absolutely no response to that prepared in Martin’s internal catalogue of things Martin Blackwood ever has a reason to say, so he fumbles, laughing nervously and stumbling over a few false starts before finally arriving on a simple, “I’m glad. I— It’s good. To help. And, I’m… I know it’s wild, because I’m trapped here or whatever, but I’m really glad we met, Jon.”
The smile he gets from Jon in response is bright and open, the eyes beneath his normal ones crinkling in a way that’s as hopelessly endearing as it is strange. He tucks his hair absently behind his ear, then shifts minutely forward so he can place a warm hand on Martin’s shoulder and squeeze, a fond gesture made quietly intimate by the quiet dark of the Archives at night.
“Rest well, Martin,” he says. His hand lingers for a long, quiet moment before he finishes, “... I’m glad, too.”
And then he’s gone, the door to old doc storage swinging shut with a gentle click. As he goes, the watched feeling of the Archive starts to fade, for once, leaving Martin alone in the dark with the heat of a thin hand weighing ghostly and strange on his shoulder, the brand-like sense of it through his thin pajama shirt lingering there long after he should be asleep.
Fuck.